Specifically, when you open a reasonable number of tabs in any browser, the tabs look like this. However, as my friend has just imported all of his tabs and bookmarks over from Chrome to Firefox, he has an immense number of tabs open right now; in Chrome, he can see all the tabs at once with its UI. On Firefox, however, it keeps things actually legible by not squashing the tabs so obscenely.
“Okay, so I need some help. I’ve noticed Firefox doesn’t show all tabs like Chrome does. Instead it shows a few, and makes me press a button to see more. Please, tell me there’s a way to fix that.”
I pointed out that this was an accessibility thing (being able to actually see and read the tabs is a useful feature) and they said it was “not good enough”. Further explanation of basic things such as using their scroll wheel to scroll through their tabs, or double/triple clicking on the left/right arrows to jump by page or start/end, or using the Ctrl+# shortcuts, are all tools at their arsenal, but that also was not good enough. Personally I’m a 1,000-2,000 tabs kinda person and manage just fine with those instead of having each tab be literally a pixel wide, so I’ve never looked for an addon to crush all the tabs together like Chrome does, and my attempts at searching the extensions and themes has come up with nothing.
Is there something like this in the about:config page perhaps, or a convenient theme/extension/addon/plugin/etc that my friend can install to feel comfy using Firefox again?
I’m sure there’s something out there, but I don’t know what it is. I would encourage your friend to try it out as is. If they try to make Firefox look and feel like Chrome then they will inevitably just want Chrome back. Instead, if they try out things from the Firefox way of doing it they will actually see if they like it for what it truly is. At least, I’ve found the most success with browsers that way, let them shine for what they are and see which I like. Change is always hard, especially in something you use for hours on end every day, but maybe with your encouragement they will be open to it.
Unfortunately this friend is extremely autistic and is having a full-blown panic meltdown due to “they can’t see all their tabs without clicking a button”. I’ve been encouraging them for several years to slowly migrate to firefox as they’ve been suffering crippling performance issues and memory leaks with chrome, but instead of heeding my advice (to slowly acclimate themselves to differences like this) they just found a tutorial to import everything at once and now they’re overwhelmed with all the differences happening at once and panicking.
I found the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth setting in about:config and suggested they set that to 0 but it’s only a compromise at best and I doubt they will end up sticking with firefox at this rate to be honest.
For someone like this, it probably makes sense to just throw some more CPU/RAM at it. You have to want to make a change like this to some degree.
They’re using my previous PC which I sent to them as a gift when building my current PC. It’s got decent specs and 16GB ram but they are the sort to have anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred Chrome tabs open across a handful of windows plus BlueStacks (an Android VM/emulator tool) open with a few instances of mobile gacha games plus whatever actual PC game he’s playing. The other day his computer “couldn’t open youtube” so after some troubleshooting it turned out he’d filled up his entire ram (16GB) and his entire swapdisk (set to 32GB on the main C: drive, which was an SSD) but it overflowed and continued going until the C drive itself was full, somewhere around like 75GB of ram being used because he left everything running for over 9 days without ever closing anything.
So long as they continue to insist on using Chrome and leaving half a dozen emulators/virtual machines spun up 24/7 while also leaving things like final fantasy running “in the background”, no amount of tossing more CPU/RAM at the problem will fix it; Chrome itself shouldn’t be using up 50+GB of ram but it’s Chrome, so it has memory leaks every other day, and he’s fixing the crux of the issue by ditching Chrome (also has had some security issues recently and we JUST did a malware cleanup this week as well due to a Chrome issue so just another reason he’s trying to ditch it in favor of Firefox)
I really do appreciate the input though. It can be frustrating (as an autism myself) to ask “Hey how do I do A” and everyone responds with “don’t do A, do B or C instead” but I have to do A for a very specific set of reasons. Even still, it’s nice to see that everyone is at least pitching in with extra info and advice, just in case.
Why though it doesn’t even make sense. If you’re keeping a mental track of the ordering of the tabs, at that point you may as well utilize the bookmark tab and have it set to “always visible”. You can use folders, and strip the bookmark down to just the icon if you want.
Having all those tabs open is accomplishing the same thing, because those tabs aren’t active anymore. Chrome will disconenct those tabs otherwise your computer will die.
For firefox, especially if he cares for perserving the order of the tabs, he’s probably like that one extention that puts them in containers. If he wants the ordering to be one linear set, then probably the best option is to have a way to show it as a list. I’m not near my computer now but if you right click on the arrow, I’m pretty sure it shows you a list… and clicking on the tab won’t take it out of the order.
Another user already commented it, but they should look at the tree-style tabs addon. They still won’t be able to see everything no matter what, but depending on screen size it might be able to fit more, and choose what is visible or not. I just started using it and it does take a bit to learn how to use effectively but seems overall better.
Thanks for this! I’ll toss the info their way and see what they say. As far as I understand from trying to troubleshoot and discuss with them, the really only viable solution is to have all of their tabs visible at once “just like Chrome”, so I don’t know if the tree-style tabs plugins will fit their needs, but it can’t hurt to suggest it.
I really do appreciate the input; It can be frustrating (as an autism myself) to ask “Hey how do I do A” and everyone responds with “don’t do A, do B or C instead” but I have to do A for a very specific set of reasons. Even still, it’s nice to see that everyone is at least pitching in with extra info and advice, just in case.
Yeah I definitely understand how it would be frustrating to not get the answer you need. A few things I thought of that would be helpful in finding a solution, what is the expected maximum number of tabs that need to be visible? Or is it that it truly needs to be all of them all the time?
FWIW, it isn’t even true that Chrome will show you all of the tabs - the browser continues to let you open tabs even after it stops updating the tab display to indicate that there are additional tabs - some tabs are just going to visually be out of reach, unless you close some tabs.
Are the tab grouping addons not useful, there’s so many. I personally don’t use them since I’m more of a 0 inbox and under 10 tab kinda person. I’d rather have 3 browsers open for different workflows.
I find it hard to navigate without being able to see the favicon and page name on the tab but if I had many, some sort of auto grouping extension might be immensely helpful.
Thanks for this! I’ll toss the info their way and see what they say. As far as I understand from trying to troubleshoot and discuss with them, the really only viable solution is to have all of their tabs visible at once “just like Chrome”, so I don’t know if the tree-style tabs plugins will fit their needs, but it can’t hurt to suggest it.
I really do appreciate the input; It can be frustrating (as an autism myself) to ask “Hey how do I do A” and everyone responds with “don’t do A, do B or C instead” but I have to do A for a very specific set of reasons. Even still, it’s nice to see that everyone is at least pitching in with extra info and advice, just in case.